Zenith, UBA, GTBank Rakes N77.57BN Through E-Banking in Six Months

Three commercial banks operating in the country generated a total sum of N77.57 billion from electronic-banking products in the half-year (H1) of 2019, as against N26.49 billion generated in the corresponding period of 2018. The banks considered are; Zenith Bank Plc, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc and Guaranty Trust Bank plc (GTBank). The growth recorded through the e-banking income were mostly generated via Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) N65 charges on remote-on-us transactions, Online transfer, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), and Points of Sales Terminal (POS) transactions.

The breakdown of the lenders H1 report showed that Zenith bank and its subsidiaries reported N27.08 billion E-banking income in H1 2019 as against N10.08 billion generated in H1 2018, an increase of 168.69 per cent.

The bank in the period under review recorded a remarkable growth in both value and volume of electronic product transactions. Checks, further shows that Zenith Bank recorded N300 billion transactions on its USSD transactions in H1 2019 as against N201 billion generated in H1 2018. The lender also reported N4.79trillion value of transactions on its Internet bank in H1 2019 as against N2.9trillion in H1 2018. In addition, Zenith Bank reported N3.67trillion on its “Zenith Mobile” in H1 2019 compared with N2 trillion in H1 2018.

UBA reported N16.86 billion generated on its E-banking in H1 2019 from N12,15 billion reported in H1 2018, an increase of 38.8 per cent while GTBank reported an increase of 67.1 per cent to N7.13billion generated on its E-banking in h1 2019 from N4.27 billion reported in H1 2018. GTBank reported a total value of N1.74 trillion transactions on its USSD, an increase of 41 per cent from N1.23 trillion reported in prior H1 2018. The breakdown for H1 2019 revealed that a N235.59billion USSD transactions were recorded in January; N245.95 billion in February; N306.83 billion in March; N323.95 billion in April; N327.09 in May and N297.95 billion in June.

According to the GTBank report, the bank recorded a total volume of 265.1 million USSD transactions in H1 2019, an increase of 35.5 per cent from 195.9million reported in H1 2018. The bank in its “digital Banking and USSD performance” report disclosed that the total number of USSD unique users grew by 20 per cent to 5.5 million in June 2019 from 4.6 million in December 2018.

The bank further disclosed that the total number of active Users on the USSD platform also increased by 1 million users from 3.7 million in Dec. 2018 to 4.7 million in Jun. 2019. Mobile Banking showed N3.95trillion total value of transactions in H1, an increase of 55 per cent from N2.57trillion in H1 2018, while its volume grew by 62 per cent to 61.7 million in H1 2019 from 38.2 million reported in H1 2018. Meanwhile, the finance experts have said that the increasing number of bank customers and Information Technology innovation in the banking sector played a critical role in E-banking income generated by commercial banks operating in the country.